


Oh No (I'll Never Let You Down)

by overratedantihero



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Attempted Dissection, Attempted Torture, But Not Enough Comfort, Canon Typical Violence, Capture, Chafing, Chemical Weapons, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Suspension, Non-Sexual Bondage, Non-Sexual Suspension, Rescue, villain monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 23:24:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16438814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overratedantihero/pseuds/overratedantihero
Summary: Dick stumbles upon a new face at the Gotham docks and bites off a little more than he can chew. Deathstroke rescues him.





	Oh No (I'll Never Let You Down)

**Author's Note:**

> I am a day late on all of these prompts because I keep going out for drinks in the evening before posting my drafts. I'll literally remind myself to post, and then I'll spend an hour drawing a Nightwing mask in eyeliner and blue eye shadow so that I can go take shots of chartreuse in a wig. Halloween weekend is hard. 
> 
> Anyway, Slade/Dick Week #3, Rescue

Dick quite liked being tied up. He knew he shouldn’t, just like he knew that Jason should stop gushing about jokerized fries around Bruce. It was a preference he had no business enjoying given how often he found himself in the condition.

But being tied up because Penguin’s hired help got lucky with a metal baseball bat was different than being tied up by Kori or Helena or Roy. Mercenaries tied him to be small and contained, or to hang in warehouses, with rough hemp or, if Dick were lucky, polypropylene. For as many years as Dick had been slipping those knots, he’d have thought the entire criminal underworld would have learned by now. All the Bats were escape artists, but Dick was the original Boy Hostage. He’d made escaping capture into a performance.

Arrogance was a folly.

When Dick caught on to some suspicious activity near the docks while on patrol, he didn’t alert any of the others. Scarecrow was misbehaving downtown, a few unscheduled delivery trucks in the early morning wasn’t enough to call in the cavalry.

And so, Dick dropped down onto the top of one of the trucks himself, whistling a pop song that he’d heard on the radio earlier. He dispatched the first four men swiftly, cleanly, without interrupting the tune. A fifth managed to shout, but Dick was on him before the man could do more than gargle wordlessly. Dick stopped whistling for a few beats, in case others had heard the cry. No one else came.

The men had been carting trunks into a storage unit. Dick took advantage of the momentary silence and popped one open. Inside were what must have been thousands of loose, plastic, power rings. Novelty toys. Dick slipped one on his finger and dug deeper, until he uncovered some unfamiliar ammunition and accompanying high magazine assault rifles.

“One of these is not like the other,” Dick sing-songed, as he pulled one of the guns out and snapped a picture with his cellphone to send to Bruce. He gingerly set the gun aside to take a picture of the sea of power rings, also to send to Bruce.

 _Want me to snag one for you? I know how much you admire the Green Lantern Corps_ , Dick typed. 

Dick hint send and smirked at himself. And then he promptly dived to the ground as a blade whistled through the air, right where his neck had been. He pocketed his cellphone and scrambled to his feet, back pedaling away from the trunks. He had his escrima sticks drawn before he even processed the identity of his assailant.

“Deathstroke?” Dick hissed, lowering his escrima and muting his comms link. “I didn’t receive a courtesy call. I take it this isn’t a friendly visit?”

Slade cocked his head. “Run along, kid. This isn’t for your concern.”

Dick huffed. “Like hell it isn’t. Arms dealing, really?”

Slade shrugged and sheathed his sword. “It’s a paying job. I have expensive tastes. So, do my more frequent companions.” Slade was polite enough to drag his head up and down, checking Dick out, presumably in case Dick missed the implication. A gentleman.

“It’s in Gotham. It’s my concern. Either fight me or step aside,” Dick said, raising his escrima again. Slade didn’t reach for a weapon.

“Kid,” Slade said, voice low. “This isn’t a native Gothamite. You’ve never fought him before, and he’s a sadist. Go. Home. If you must, you can clean up the aftermath from the other side.”

“After distribution?” Dick clarified. “I’ll be sure to add that to the suggestion box. See you, Slade.” Dick waved dramatically before pulling his hook from his boot and shooting a line into the target storage container. He zipped by Slade and Slade crossed his arms, tilting his head back to glare at the sky.

Slade appeared to be the last line of defense, and so Dick wasted no time in bursting into the container, expecting to see more, similar trunks, and maybe a supervisor.

He did see someone. A slight man, wearing a half-face respirator, regarded him. Dick’s throat felt sticky.

“I was wondering which one of you I’d catch,” the man said mildly, muffled from behind his mask.

Dick opened his mouth to retort but fell over instead.

Dick liked being tied up, but not like this, and not in this context.

When he came to, his throat was sticky. He tried to smack his lips, but he couldn’t around what felt like a ball gag. He grimaced as much as he could with the contraption around his mouth. He tried to stretch, but he met the taught resistance of rope and then unsettling realization that he wasn’t touching the ground.

As he came back into himself, he assessed. He was upside down-ish. His left leg was straight up in the air, hung there by ropes around his ankle, calf, and thigh. His right calf was tied tight to his right thigh, and that leg was weighed down to the ground. His suspension was maintained by ropes around his pelvis, threaded through the ropes around his left leg. If Dick painstakingly lifted his head, he could see the hook in the ceiling.

His escrima were scattered off to the side, and his arms were locked behind his back with an artfully tied chest harness of sorts.

Dick growled in frustration. He looked trussed up for a scene, but with the wrong rope and in his full suit, which had enough padding and armor to make the stretch ache unpleasantly.

Footsteps behind him caused him to jerk, but the ropes held and the weight on his right leg didn’t budge.

“I’ve heard of you,” that mild voice chirped. “Most of you, if not all of you. Usually I deal with retailers from afar, but I just had to see for myself. I had to create insurance policies for my Gotham buyers because of hobbyists like you.”

Oh! A direct supplier. Bruce would like this. Bruce would like it more if Dick wasn’t spread apart like a lycra fetishist, but to quote Bruce that one time he wouldn’t buy Dick an elephant, you can’t always get what you want (he did promptly buy Dick a zoo, defeating the lesson immediately, but it was the thought that counted.)

“Your buyers can get fucked,” Dick offered helpfully. It came across as a mumble and then punctuating drool that crawled _up_ his face due to gravity and the angle of his head. Dick resolved not to speak again.

“As a businessman, I should focus my visit on a few clean dispatches, to assure my buyers that their products are safe. Customer service, really. But I’m not just a businessman, am I? I’m a person. With hobbies and interests and… proclivities,” the man continued to drone, in that same, gentle voice.

Dick grew still as death.

“And I can’t help but wonder, what is it about your lot that’s causing my market so many problems? I’m a scientist at heart, you see. A chemist by trade, but all scientists harbor a thirst, a curiosity. That yearning desire to learn how things tick. I deal with formulas all day, but I truly do enjoy organisms too. As a side hobby, you’d understand. I’m so sure you don’t carry about the day wearing that, now do you?”

Dick tried to shrug, but the harness was unforgiving. He heard something pop and he hissed. The man began to pace around Dick’s suspended body and to ease the strain that came with lifting his head, Dick settled with counting his footsteps.

“Exactly. We all have our hobbies. In my spare time, I enjoy a bit of dissection myself. It’s harder, with fresh specimen. I have to drain you first, or it makes my exploration… messy. A surprising number of storage units in this city have drains.”

It wasn’t surprising. Gotham was off the Eastern coast, surrounded by water, heavy rains and storms caused flooding.

This man was an unknown, and Dick could already hear Bruce’s lecture. He stretched his fingers and felt around for any sort of catch or key to understanding whatever knot he was in. While the presentation of the ropes and decorative knots were indicative of a bondage scene, the rough material and absence of a safety catch paired with the excessive tightness wasn’t… ideal. His blood was rushing to his head, he wasn’t sure how steady he’d be on his feet once he was loose given their numbness from the position.

If more villains tied him up like this, he wouldn’t slip their knots so easily. Maybe they should take notes.

Dick’s attention smacked back to the man when the man began to unroll the shirt of Dick’s suit, with a fair amount of roughness, to slide it from underneath the ropes around his pelvis and shove it down near the chest harness. Dick began to wiggle with earnest.

“I was surprised this was a two piece,” the man said conversationally. “The lines of the suit are so smooth, and you don’t wear a belt. You should have worn a belt.”

Noted, Dick thought dizzily as the man started drawing X’s and lines across Dick’s abdomen with a marker. Like a plastic surgeon or an ER doctor or a homicidal chemical arms dealer with sadistic tendencies.

With no small amount of irritation (and an unwelcome sting), Dick remembered that Slade warned him about this. Well, not this, but he’d warned him about an unknown sadist. Slade was somewhere, Dick realized. Protecting the storage unit in case anyone tried to intervene.

Dick’s comms link crackled to life. It was Babs, her disrespect for privacy, as always, a comfort. Dick liked to think that he’d get to hear her voice as he bled out like venison.

“Nightwing? You’ve been silent for a while. All clear?”

“10-4,” Dick mumbled around the ball gag, knowing full well that his comms was still muted.

“I always heard you were more talkative than you’ve letting on,” the man said. He’d wandered away from Dick, and his voice carried from across the room along with metallic clinking. “I like a good conversation while I work. Usually my subjects scream, hence the gag, but you’re behaving remarkably well.”

Dick didn’t want it to be said he was behaving. He also didn’t want to dislocate his shoulder. He remained still and quiet.

The man returned and crouched near Dick’s face. A nondescript, soft face. A respirator mask. If he ever wanted to relocate to Gotham, his aesthetic would have a home. From the corner of his eye, Dick saw the scalpel the man was holding.

“I’m going to begin now. Organs are difficult to preserve once the body perishes, so hang in there, okay?”

Dick was about to spittle something about how puns were _his_ brand, but a deafening _bang_ sounded. Blood splattered across Dick’s face and Dick mirrored the wide-eyed expression of the man right before the man toppled over. Dick could see Slade’s legs from this angle.

“Kid. You’re an expensive brat, you know?” Slade muttered, kicking aside the man’s body to crouch next to Dick and undo the ball gag. Dick stretched his jaw out, uncaring of the drool and spit and blood on his face. Slade had seen him with worse. Slade had fucked him with worse.

“If I started obeying you now, you’d stop spanking me,” Dick winked, the movement odd behind his lenses.

“I should stop spanking you anyway. You like it too much,” Slade offered.

“But this wasn’t about me. He would have taken any one of us. Could have taken Robin,” Dick muttered, tone dropping.

Slade stood, unsheathed his sword, and murmured, “Tuck your head in, watch your neck,” right before slashing through the rope keeping Dick’s left leg and pelvis suspended.

Dick crashed to the ground with a yelp. He caught the ground with his shoulder and the kettle ball weight with his shin. He’d have bruises. Deep ones. Slade was punishing him.

“You wouldn’t have saved Robin, would you?” Dick accused, shuffling away as Slade prowled towards him, sword still out.

“Robin has more discipline than you. Hold still, I need to cut you free,” Slade sighed, tucking the sword back into its sheath.

Dick’s comms link crackled to life again and his eyes widened. He scrambled with numb fingers to flick his mic back to life and he murmured, “All good, Oracle. Took a quick dip in Gotham Bay on a false lead. I’ll check in with you later.”

“Behave, N,” Barbara chided. “Thanks for checking in.”

Dick muted his comms again and held obligingly still while Slade took a small knife and sawed through the ropes. After each one loosened, Slade massaged Dick’s skin there.

“You need lotion. And a bath,” Slade said, wiping blood from Dick’s cheek.

“You killed a major chemical weapons supplier,” Dick murmured. “That’s almost heroic.”

“No,” Slade corrected, helping Dick stand and letting Dick lean heavily on him while he regained feeling in his limbs. “I rescued a disobedient little bird.”

“My hero,” Dick cooed, nuzzling Slade’s shoulder.

Slade smacked him on the ass. “One.”


End file.
